“Africa is a rubber ball; the harder you dash it to the ground, the higher it will rise.”
The universality of the African proverb (above) quoted by former poet laureate of Liberia Melvin B. Tolson, professor of English, speech, and drama at Langston University (1947-1965), is reflected in the inspiring story of Oklahoma’s only historically black college or university (HBCU)-Langston University. Born in turmoil, strengthened through adversity, Langston University today sits “high on a throne with royal mien.” She celebrated her centennial in March 1997 and has moved with confidence into a second century of excellence.
On the one-year anniversary of Oklahoma statehood, April 22, 1890, Langston City was officially established.
Promoted by its founders, one of whom was prominent African American Edwin P. McCabe, who was influential in the selection of the site of Langston University, the City of Langston had a population of 600 and had 25 retail businesses by 1892, the year in which a common school was built and opened with an enrollment of 135.
Since African Americans were not permitted to attend any of the institutions of higher education in the Oklahoma Territory, black citizens appeared before the Oklahoma Industrial School and College Commission in July 1892 to petition that Langston have a college. Eventually, Territorial Governor William Gary Renfrow, who had vetoed a civil rights bill that would have disregarded segregation, proposed a reform bill establishing the university. It was founded as a land grant college through the Morrill Act of 1890 and officially established by House Bill 151 on March 12, 1897, like the Colored Agricultural and Normal University.
